He didn't lose his temper. He just caught my hand. "If hitting me helps, go ahead. Hit me all you want. But once you're done, that's enough."
I opened my mouth, about to speak.
A small figure burst through the doorway with a shriek.
A crack rang out, and a harder slap landed across my face.
I fell back onto the bed, ears ringing, vision going black.
Lucinda Lambert planted herself in front of Giles, tears spilling down her face in that perfect, practiced way.
"How could you hit him!"
"Do you have any idea he's been at your bedside for seven days and seven nights, waiting for you to wake up?"
"He's the father of my child. My man. What right do you have to hit him? What right do you have to treat him like something you can take your anger out on!"
Something soft and aching flickered in Giles's eyes, and he pulled her into his arms.
That look. I knew it too well.
He used to look at me like that.
When I nearly died of alcohol poisoning trying to ransom him back from his enemies.
When I knelt on the ground and smashed my forehead bloody to keep the debt collectors from taking him.
So the tenderness I'd traded my life for could be replaced, just like that, by a single tear from someone else.